There have been some recent artcles in the news about the “SaaSpocalypse”–the devaluation of software as a service companies like SAP and Salesforce. The idea is that AI models can quickly re-create this type of software and that complex software itself is no longer a “moat”.
I can see both sides of this argument, but what I really wanted to talk about is more of the idea that we’re entering an era where software is something that can be more personalized. I don’t know why the first thing my mind jumps to is something like a bespoke suit or custom made pair of shoes, but essentially I think these AI agents are lowering the barrier to having your own custom XYZ.
I spent about 15 minutes today prompting Claude Opus 4.6 to create a TUI Rust email client. A couple of hours later (without me doing anything), I have something that can read email just fine. I think with a couple more prompts, I could probably replace my notmuch-emacs setup, and I think that’s what I’ll do. I might still might have it open emacs to compose email keeping in line with the unix philosophy (sort of), but I think the viewing can be replaced with this new client. I’ll probably move off of using notmuch to custom rules to sort my email into folders. I have yet to decide whether that’ll follow some sort of client-side sieve technology or if I create something bespoke again.
It will be interesting to see how custom people take this. At the extreme end, you could have an agent build a custom UI on the fly, but that might lack the consistency you’d get with purpose built software.